Obama gun panel draws lawsuit

1/15/13 11:54 PM EST

A conservative gadfly filed a lawsuit Tuesday charging that the task force President Barack Obama set up last month to provide recommendations on policies to rein in gun violence broke the law by meeting privately and without proper public notice.

Attorney Larry Klayman, who runs an organization named Freedom Watch, filed the suit in federal court in the Middle District of Florida.

"The American people, whose rights to gun ownership stem from colonial times and are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, are being illegally shut out of the process," Klayman said in a statement. "Open government is more honest government.”

Under a 1972 law, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, groups with an official role advising the federal government generally have to meet in public and publish notices of their meetings 15 days in advance. However, the requirement only applies to groups including people who are not federal employees and does not apply to groups consisting solely of federal officials.

Klayman's lawsuit (posted here) asserts that outsiders have been part of the Obama administration's gun policy development panel, which was set up after the shooting spree in Newtown, Conn. and has been headed by Vice President Joe Biden. The suit cites "national media" reports that "lobbyist from the video game industry, Walmart and other private lobbyists...fully participated in non-public meetings of the [task force] as if they were members of the [task force], and, in fact, were members of the [task force]."

The White House had no immediate comment on the lawsuit, but previously told POLITICO that there are "no non-government participants" in the group developing the gun policy proposals. Some press reports have described outsiders as being part of the task force, but the White House says it has simply been consulting outsiders in developing the policy—not giving outsiders a direct role in making the recommendations.

Obama aides—perhaps trying to head off lawsuits like the one filed Tuesday—insisted at the outset that there was no formal task force. However, in a TV interview aired Dec. 30, the president used just those words. "I will put forward a very specific proposal based on the recommendations that Joe Biden's task force is putting together as we speak," Obama told NBC's "Meet The Press."

The working sessions of all of the Biden group's meetings have been closed to the press and public, though a press pool has sometimes been allowed to take pictures and briefly hear from Biden at the beginning of the sessions. He suggested at one of the first meetings that excluding the press from the talks would encourage "a frank discussion."

The lawsuit asks a judge to prohibit the task force from further meetings and that the "issuance and implementation" of the task force's recommendations also be blocked. Obama is scheduled to announce his gun policy recommendations, based on the task force's work, Wednesday morning. It does not appear Klayman has filed any emergency motion that could win an order blocking the recommendations, even if a judge were willing to issue one. The case was assigned to Chief Judge Anne Conway, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush.

While there's little evidence that outsiders have had a formal, ongoing role in the gun-policy process, the allegation they have may be enough for the suit to proceed and perhaps get to the discovery stage.

A similar suit Klayman filed in Washington in 2009 over Obama's health care policy process remains pending. Thus far, the judge assigned to that case has refused to dismiss it based solely on the White House's assertions that outsiders consulted in the process of drafting health care reform legislation played no continuing, ongoing role in the process.